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Background: The concepts of Clinical Research and Health Services Research are well known. Clinical Research investigates and describes effects under Experimental Study Conditions (ESC) while Health Services Research investigates and describes effects under Real World Conditions (RWC). The effects under[for full text, please go to the a.m. URL], 18. Deutscher Kongress für Versorgungsforschung (DKVF)

Hofstede's dimensions of national cultures termed Masculinity-Femininity (MAS) and Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) (Hofstede, 2001) are proposed to be of relevance for understanding national-level differences in self-assessed fears. The potential predictive role of national MAS was based on the classical work of Fodor (Fodor, 1974). Following Fodor, it was predicted that masculine (or tough) societies in which clearer differentiations are made between gender roles (high MAS) would report higher national levels of fears than feminine (or soft/modest) societies in which such differentiations are made to a clearly lesser extent (low MAS). In addition, it was anticipated that nervous-stressful-emotionally-expressive nations (high UAI) would report higher national levels of fears than calm-happy and low-emotional countries (low UAI), and that countries high on both MAS and UAI would report the highest national levels of fears. A data set comprising 11 countries (N 5000) served as the basis for analyses. As anticipated, (a) high MAS predicted higher national levels of Agoraphobic fears and of Bodily Injury-Illness-Death fears; (b) higher scores on both UAI and MAS predicted higher national scores on Bodily Injury-Illness-Death fears, fears of Sexual and Aggressive Scenes, and Harmless Animals fears; (c) higher UAI predicted higher national levels of Harmless Animals, Bodily Injury-Illness-Death, and Agoraphobic fears. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The WHOQOL-OLD is an international cooperation of 22 research centres under the sponsorship of the WHO for the development of an intercultural instrument for the assessment of quality of life in old age. This article outlines the fundamentals of the WHOQOL-OLD project and presents the current results of the empirical investigations for the German version of WHOQOL-OLD. Since it is an essential aspect of the WHOQOL project to include both the perspective of medical experts and that of lay persons, focus groups were conducted with lay people and health professionals at the outset of the project. The aim of these focus group discussions was to test the dimensional structure of the quality of life concept for elderly adults and to develop facet definitions. The results of the focus groups showed that elderly people associate social, physical as well as environment-related aspects with the term quality of life. The results of the international focus groups are largely identical with those of the German focus groups.

The Fear Survey Schedule-III (FSS-III) was administered to a total of 5491 students in Australia, East Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, and Venezuela, and submitted to the multiple group method of confirmatory analysis (MGM) in order to determine the cross-national dimensional constancy of the five-factor model of self-assessed fears originally established in Dutch, British, and Canadian samples. The model comprises fears of bodily injury-illness-death, agoraphobic fears, social fears, fears of sexual and aggressive scenes, and harmless animals fears. Close correspondence between the factors was demonstrated across national samples. In each country, the corresponding scales were internally consistent, were intercorrelated at magnitudes comparable to those yielded in the original samples, and yielded (in 93% of the total number of 55 comparisons) sex differences in line with the usual finding (higher scores for females). In each country, the relatively largest sex differences were obtained on harmless animals fears. The organization of self-assessed fears is sufficiently similar across nations to warrant the use of the same weight matrix (scoring key) for the FSS-III in the different countries and to make cross-national comparisons feasible. This opens the way to further studies that attempt to predict (on an a priori basis) cross-national variations in fear levels with dimensions of national cultures. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Hofstede's dimension of national culture termed Masculinity-Femininity [Hofstede (1991). Cultures and organizations: software of the mind. London: McGraw-Hill] is proposed to be of relevance for understanding national-level differences in self-assessed agoraphobic fears. This prediction is based on the classical work of Fodor [Fodor (1974). In: V. Franks & V. Burtle (Eds.), Women in therapy: new psychotherapies for a changing society. New York: Brunner/Mazel]. A unique data set comprising 11 countries (total N=5491 students) provided the opportunity of scrutinizing this issue. It was hypothesized and found that national Masculinity (the degree to which cultures delineate sex roles, with masculine or tough societies making clearer differentiations between the sexes than feminine or modest societies do) would correlate positively with national agoraphobic fear levels (as assessed with the Fear Survey Schedule - III). Following the correction for sex and age differences across national samples, a significant and large effect-sized national-level (ecological) r=+0.67 (P=0.01) was found. A highly feminine society such as Sweden had the lowest, whereas the champion among the masculine societies, Japan, had the highest national Agoraphobic fear score. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Out of the necessity of having an abbreviated form of the EMBU, a measure of perceived parental rearing behavior, a short form (s-EMBU) consisting of three scales (Rejection, Emotional Warmth and Protection) with respectively 7, 6 and 9 items (plus 1 unsealed item) was developed from the original 81-item version. The factorial and/or construct validity and reliability of this s-EMBU were examined among samples of 2442 students from Italy, Hungary, Guatemala and Greece. The data were presented for the four national groups separately. The 23-item s-EMBU is recommended as a reliable functional equivalent to the 81-item early EMBU, Attention was drawn to the need for further research to explain some of the observed cross-national differences in the correlations between parental rearing styles and personality. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science. All rights reserved.